Love

“Love by itself teaches him how he is to do good works, for those only are good works which serve your neighbor and are good. Yes, what is such love other than working without ceasing for your neighbor, so that works have the name of love, just as faith [has the name] of prayer? Thus Christ says: ‘My commandment is that you love one another just as I have loved you. No one can have greater love than that he lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15 [:12–13]). It is as if He meant to say: ‘I have so completely done all My works for your good that I even give My life for you, which is the very greatest love, that is, the greatest work of love. If I had known of a greater love, I would also have done that for you. Therefore, you should also love and do everything good for one another. I require nothing more from you. Do not tell Me that you will build Me churches, make pilgrimages, fast, sing, become monks or priests, or take up this order or that estate. Rather, you do My will and serve Me when you do good to each other and no one pays attention to himself but to others; all of this is completely on the inside’ ” (LW 79:75).

“For jealousy is not the evil anger which enemies have toward one another; but it is an anger of love, a friendly, fatherly anger, like that of men who are angry with one another, though they love one another. For such anger serves to make the love that follows all the more fervent and quite new; and if this kind of anger did not at times come between love, love would grow lax, and rust would devour it like iron. But jealousy sweeps it clean and constantly renews it, as also the heathen Terence says, ‘Love is renewed, whenever they who love each other are angry with each other.’ Therefore I am in the habit of calling zeal or jealousy ‘angry love’; for when love is angry, it does no harm. But when hatred or envy is angry, it destroys and ruins as long as it can. For our loving anger seeks and desires to remove the bad, which it hates, from the good, which it loves, so that the good and what it loves may be preserved; just as a father desires to preserve his dear child, though he desires to put away the sin. And a husband also wants to preserve his dear wife but desires that her shame and vice be undone” (LW 20:175).

“God makes distinctions between the different kinds of love, and shows that the love of a man and woman is (or should be) the greatest and purest of all loves. For he says, ‘A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife’ [Gen. 2:24], and the wife does the same, as we see happening around us every day. Now there are three kinds of love: false love, natural love, and married love. False love is that which seeks its own, as a man loves money, possessions, honor, and women taken outside of marriage and against God’s command. Natural love is that between father and child, brother and sister, friend and relative, and similar relationships. But over and above all these is married love, that is, a bride’s love, which glows like a fire and desires nothing but the husband” (LW 44:8–9).

“Third, when the neighbor’s sin is public so that it cannot be covered up and certain people know about it, love will act as follows: it will keep silence, not tell anyone about it, and go and report it to his superior whose duty it is to punish him; he will let it rest at that, pray for him and show him mercy, as in the previous case. Thus we read in Genesis 37[:2] that Joseph reported to his father Jacob that his brothers were in ill repute; he did not report their secret deeds, but merely their evil reputation; as the text has it, that is, their deeds were no longer secret but public, so that people were talking about them” (LW 52:225).

“Second, where the deed of the neighbor is obviously evil, so that a good interpretation of it is impossible, love acts as follows: if the deed is done in secret and love alone sees it or hears about it, it will keep silence, keep it buried within itself, say nothing about it to anyone, and, wherever possible, cover it up so that no one hears about it. In this way love preserves the honor of the neighbor. However, love will quietly take him aside, tell him his fault, pray for him, have patience and mercy, and think as one of the ancient fathers thought who said: this man fell yesterday, today I might fall; or: if he sins in this matter, I sin in others, both of us are in need of the same grace. So love forgives and helps, even as it prays that it too may be forgiven and helped. Christ teaches this in Matthew 18[:15]: ‘If your brother sins against you,’ (that is) secretly, so that you alone witness it, ‘go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.’ And St. Paul says in Galatians 5 [6:1]: ‘If a man is overtaken in any trespass, then teach him in a spirit of gentleness and look to yourself, lest you too be tempted’” (LW 52:224–25).